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Windows XP Starter Edition Review
Digitalommm writes "Paul Thurrott has a story on the latest developments on Windows XP Starter Edition. There are some very good points that the Linux community could adopt. An example is end-user training videos such as how to use a mouse." This is an optimistic, even glowing look at the Starter Edition, which even for Thurrot was not available for unsupervised use, only demonstrated by Microsoft for him. (For using-a-mouse videos, I would suggest also Roblimo's book Point and Click Linux .)
Please let me know when the come out with Windows XP FINISHED edition, so maybe we have a chance at something better
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Click here to find out how to use a mouse!
What? Eh? Oh.
Yes, admittedly some people need to learn the most basic of skills, such as how to use a mouse. But the people at this basic level should not then be expected to know how to keep their computer completely up-to-date and patched, or even why that's important! Given how many problems have come out of MSIE recently and how most new users primarily want to use this magical 'internet' thing, this is a huge risk.
There's really nothing more reliable for support than having a friend who knows what he/she is doing anyway.
"The product can run three programs at a time. For those families, this is exactly what they want. That's a great experience for them." Right... exactly what they want. They want to run Explorer.exe, Internet Explorer, Outlook, Wor-- wait, close an application first! "One of the big criticisms about XP Starter Edition is that it can run just three applications simultaneously, so I was curious to see what it would do if you attempted to launch more than three. In this case, the system displays a notification window telling you that you can only run three applications. The notification roughly reads as, "With Windows XP Starter Edition, you can run three programs at a time. To open a new program, please save your work, close one open application, and open the new application again." Nice work! And I guess the 800x600 max resolution is also "exactly what they want". Bah.
i know it sounds archaic, but i have watched no-skills mouse users and it's quite serious. they:
1) play "hunt the cursor" because of poor eyesight and lack of experience with visual on-screen clues
2) hold a mouse with two or less fingers
3) move the mouse around tepidly and definitely not straight such that the cursor movement bears little relation to on-screen movement
4) moving the mouse around in order to locate the cursor itself.
5) let go of the mouse and watch the mouse itself not the screen in order to press a button on it - result: mouse moves...
the use of a mouse is something that is taken for granted. try using your mouse with your OTHER hand for a few weeks to see what i mean (if you are not ambidextrous of course).
try also upping the cursor accelerator and click-speed to absolute max in order to simulate lack of coordination.
and then: don't you bloody dare write another application with many-leveled drop-down and drop-sideways menus ever again!
Why aren't touchscreens commonplace? Google for "gorilla arm syndrome" sometime.